VNC Server password reset

A very useful utility for linux users / admins is the VNC server / client that provides GUI interface. It is much simpler than the x-windows utilities and achieves the same goal of launching GUI applications on linux. Conceptually, you login to linux using putty application and give following command to launch vncserver

$ vncserver

This will prompt you to create a password, which can be anything. Upon successful launch, it will inform you of the vncserver details, including the port number.

Next on your windows client, install "VNC Viewer" software and connect to this server. Thats it!! Now if you give command "firefox" this should open up a web browser window. You can launch any GUI application like RCU or OBIEE installer.

Now if you end up forgetting VNC server password that was given earlier, perform following steps:

• Kill vnc process 'Xvnc' that was started by given user
• remove file in users home directory /home/userid/.vnc/passwd

• Remove file /tmp/.X1-lock to release the port used by previous vnc server session - This is optional step. If lock is not removed, vnc will assign next available port to the server, but make sure to use assigned port when connecting from VNC Viewer.

OBIEE 11g services started but coreapplication is down / red.

Our OBIEE 11.1.1.6.5 instance was runing fine, I had to restart the BI services, after which I noticed obiee application was not working properly. I checked in em, all services were up and running:

However the coreapplication parent status in the tree structure was still showing as red:

This appears to be a common problem, and solution seems to be stopped deployments in weblogic console.

Open weblogic console and navigate to deployment:

Search deployments with the status of 'Prepared' (sort by the status) and select them. Next, click on start:

This will prompt you if you want to start the selected deployments, choose yes:

This will change the status from prepared to 'Active'

Once this has been done for all stopped deployments, go back to EM and refresh the screen, All services should appear to be started now:

User unable to view any dashboards or reports to which he has access

We had  a new OBIEE user, that was added to an application role, but was still not able to vew dashboards and reports. This user did not have any subject area access, nor did he have access to create new reports / analysis. The user was just BI Publisher consumer which were also added to dashboards, and not for Analysis reports. We checked following, but nothing seems to fix the issue:

-The user was added to an application role, and this application role had read permission to the folder, right from root, all the way to dashboard and report level.
-The user was part of the application role that had access to my reports and my dashboards area.
-Other users part of same application role were able to view dashboards intended for the role.
-We were unable to add user directly to catalog group (or any user)
-When admin used 'act as' functionality, the dashboard was still not showing up even for admin

After trying several combination, we added the user to another application role, to see how permissions change. After doing this, we noticed that user was able to view the new dashboards as well as the dashboard which he was intended to view. Next, we removed the user from newly added role, and now the dashboard permissions kept working.

Appears to be clearly a bug. For solution like these the going goes, implementing BI is an art, as echoed by my client as well. It is more true for OBIEE 11g per say. Just an FYI, we had this issue on 11.1.1.6.9

Arun~

Catalog Manager does not launch / open in version 11.1.1.7.1 (and 11.1.1.7.0)

Issue:

I was unable to launch catalog manager for 11.1.1.7.0 / 11.1.1.7.1 version of OBIEE. I installed Catalog Manager using client tools installation for 64bit machine.

 

The full path where OBIEE 64bit client tools were installed was:

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\

 

The AdminTool works fine but catalog manager does not open. When I launch CatalogManager from programs menu, nothing happens.

I went to the following path using windows explorer:

C:\Program Files\Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition Plus Client Tools\oraclebi\orahome\bifoundation\web\catalogmanager

and manually executed  - runcat.cmd 

And got error

Solution:

Then I edited the  runcat.cmd file and specified the actual path for variable $USER_INSTALL_DIR$. Note since the path has space in it, we have to provide path in quotes. This appears to be known bug for 11.1.1.7.x version of OBIEE.

The above should resolve the issue for most. If you still face issue, the easiest thing to do would be to uninstall the client tools and reinstall it under C:\obiee folder instead of c:\program files OR with any folder which doesn’t have a space in its path.

Hiding Export to Excel or CSV function in OBIEE 11g dashboards

OBIEE 11g has multiple export options including PDF, Excel, Powerpoint, Web Archive, CSV, Tab delimited, XML etc. There could be a need where business do not want users to download the report and edit the data before sharing it. This can be prevented by disabling excel / CSV etc options.

 

 

 

The way to do this is uncheck 'Export' Option in the dashboard properties, and leaving the 'Print option' checked. This will give following two options and excel of CSV will be disabled.